Character And Environment Modeling Is Pretty Much Complete

By Author: Guild Black
Total Articles: 197
Comment this article

Don’t think you’ll just be able to sit back and wait for a group to clear a monster and then quickly run in to gank the loot; drops are assigned to players to prevent that.The new world of Tyria is far more explorable now, especially with the new jumping and swimming mechanics,, but with freedom comes the pitfalls…literally. You can fall off of cliffs, and at one point I even stopped to revive a player in Divinity’s Reach the capital of Kryta who had hurled themselves from an upper floor to the lower and didn’t survive the fall. Everything in the environment is open concept now, and you are no longer immune to klutziness in the towns. Watch your step!

The developers have also given players an added incentive for fully exploring the gorgeous world they’ve created for us. Aside from the typical experience points earned by completing tasks from the main story-line and sidequests, you can now get XP for World Completion. Each area has a set number of Points of Interest, Waypoints, tasks, and skill challenges. So, definitely stray off the beaten path – you never know what you may find!Other changes include ...
... learning crafts to create armor, food, jewelry and more. You can have two of these disciplines at a time, and switch between six disciplines for a fee. With crafting comes the need to gather materials, which requires tools such as pickaxes or sickles to be able to mine the materials that you require.

Of course, what we’ve seen is still a work in progress, and you are reminded of that frequently. After completing a main story task, you’ll take a short two or three question survey to ask how your experience was. Furthermore, cutscenes have placeholders consisting of the characters conversing in front of a backdrop of concept art with a “Work In Progress” sign just above, serving as a reminder to the player, “Yes this is a rough cut. No, it won’t be like this for launch.”Even being a rough draft, ArenaNet has managed to really flesh out the detail of the world around you beautifully.

Character and environment modeling is pretty much complete with very few bugs, and everything is simply gorgeous to behold. Even with the graphics turned down on my Alienware m11x v2 laptop the Nvidia 335M GPU has a tough time with it, although this might be a driver issue, everything was a significant improvement over its predecessors visually speaking. However, I withhold my final judgement until our full review.Overall, our experience with Guild Wars 2 was an enjoyable one during the beta weekend. There’s so much to see and do that you really need to dedicate an entire weekend to it, and even then, you may not finish every quest and see what there is to see. After a glimpse into what Tyria is about to become, we can’t wait to see what’s in store for us on the full release!